On May 11, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management conditionally approved Shell’s plans to drill in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska, putting sensitive habitat at risk of an oil spill and other dangers.

Thanks to a new bill in Congress, one of America’s greatest wild places -- the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska -- might become permanently protected as a wilderness area.

The federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management recently issued an analysis predicting that Lease Sale 193 in the Arctic Ocean’s Chukchi Sea—if developed—has a 75 percent chance of a large oil spill. Amazingly, the agency is proceeding with Shell’s plans to drill there.